It’s just the latest evidence that there’s a formidable field of competitors developing for Netflix, which is by far the streaming video stock of the moment. An analyst by the name of Martin Pyykkonen of Wedge Partners writes Google’s “content moves represent a significant threat to [Netflix] and we think content providers will be all too happy to see a new buyer enter the content licensing market.” As we’ve mentioned before, the costs of locking down content have been rising, something that Netflix shareholders should be keeping an eye on. Pyykkonen writes:

We believe the threat to NFLX from GOOG’s moves to add higher value content to YouTube is substantial. YouTube is easily the most watched provider of online video in the world. According to ComScore, YouTube had 144M unique visitors in the U.S. in the month of February alone. Traffic volumes aside, perhaps the most significant advantage that GOOG has in competition with NFLX is the widespread distribution of the YouTube streaming application on consumer devices such as the iPhone, Apple TV, Android, BD Players, IP-enabled TVs, etc. Unlike other streaming video competitors, YouTube is on nearly every device platform on which NFLX is running today. We believe that it is this platform distribution in particular that gives GOOG a significant leg up on the competition vs. NFLX. Time will tell how aggressive GOOG will be in competing with NFLX, but we think the threat is substantial.